C.I.A. Declines Specific Comment On Ties With Brooklyn Professor

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The Central Intelligence Agency said yesterday that it would “not deprive people from voluntarily offering information to their Government,” but it declined specific comment on its involvement with a Brooklyn College faculty member.

Dr. John W. Kneller, the college's president, assigned Donald R. Reich, provost, to make an official inquiry into charges raised by the political science department late Wednesday that Michael Selzer, an assistant professor, had violated academic standards by what the department said was “agreement to engage in covert intelligence‐gathering” for the C.I.A.

Professor Selzer has denied involvement in any “covert” program, telling newsmen he had agreed only to a request to pass on anything interesting he might by happenstance learn on trips abroad. He is currently on medical leave in Jerusalem, slated to return Feb. 3, and he said he would fight any disciplinary action—on which he is assured full due process.

C.I.A. Will ‘Hear Out Any Citizen’

A spokesman for the C.I.A. said it “has a policy of refraining from comment on individual cases,” but added:

“We have 30‐odd offices of our domestic collection division which will hear out any citizen who would like to offer information to the Government. They have been in existence about 25 years, and they would not be around if there were not enough Americans willing to cooperate with their Government.”

The spokesman suggested that most people would regard it wasteful to spend large sums otherwise for “extensive operations abroad to gather information which is overt and which is readily available from knowledgeable American citizens here at home.”

The effort to discipline or even oust Professor Selzer may be the first based on alleged C.I.A. roles. George Bush, the C.I.A. director, last February ruled out any paid or contractual relationships with newsmen and churchmen, on the ground of their special status under the Constitution, but there is no policy against similar collaboration with members of other occupations.

The report by Brooklyn College's political science department cited policy statements, including a 1976 resolution by the American Association of University Professors, that intelligence agencies’ exploitation of scholars “has risked undermining the credibility of published research and risked compromising the position of academics.”

It also quoted a resolution last September by the council of the American Political Science Association opposing government involvement of scholars “in covert intelligence operations under the guise of academic research.”

Professor Selzer, 36 years old, is unmarried and has been on the Brooklyn College faculty full‐time for four years after two years part‐time. He has been reappointed for the next school year and would be due for a decision on permanent tenure by Dec. 31.

He teaches “psychopolitics”—psychological interpretations of political figures. His salary is $18,280 a year.

Born in India, he went to the preparatory Bedales School in England, and received bachelor and master's degrees at Balliol College, Oxford. His doctorate from the City University's Graduate Center.

He lived in Israel for about four years before coming to the United States in 1966. Then he was for a time a staff member of the American Council for Judaism, an anti‐Zionist organization.

In a 1967 book, “The Aryanization of the Jewish State,” he called Israel “the world's freest police state,” in which Oriental Jews are victims of “cultural genocide.”

He is also author of “The Wineskin and the Wizard: The Problem of Jewish Power in the Context of East European Jewish History” and “Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy,” both published in 1970.

He was general editor of a series of books on ethnic prejudice in America, in which he himself was author in 1972 of “'Kilter A Documentary History of AntiSemitism in America.” He was co‐author of “The Nuremberg Mind: The Psychology of the Nazi Leaders,” with Florence R. Miale in 1975.

A version of this archives appears in print on January 14, 1977, on Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: C.I.A. Declines Specific Comment On Ties With Brooklyn Professor. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe